Save Article

Bring the Ocean Home

Saltwater pools can be gentler on the skin, the bank account and the to-do list

By

Sara Ruffin Costello

Updated June 15, 2012 12:01 a.m. ET

UNLIKE THE illicitly delicious smell of gas fumes, chlorine vapors are not at all pleasant. Acrid bleach-y odor along with the attendant threat of bleary-eyed conjunctivitis and skin-stripping dehydration are precisely what has driven swimmers toward a purer alternative. For the last 20 years, pool owners have been converting from chlorine to saline and more recently, copper ionization systems.

When my own pool was mistakenly drained by a knuckleheaded maintenance guy, it popped up out of the ground like something from...